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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

If Scientology is a “cult,” then why is Mormonism a “religion”?

They're both cults actually!

The age-old question of just how big a cult Scientology really is
reared its ugly head this week when the Atlantic found itself in some
hot water for publishing an advertorial (sponsored content) from the Scientologists.
But what’s interesting to me isn’t Scientology per se, it’s Mormonism –
and the larger question of how we as a society decide whether one
religion is real and the other fake.Sponsored content is always a tricky question – in terms of how well
you indicate that the content isn’t real news, but rather is an ad – I
sense that the bigger problem people had with the ads was that they were
paid for by the Church of Scientology, an organization many consider
little more than a bullying cult.

But why do so many of us accept without question that Scientology is a
cult, and no one other than Scientologists gets very upset about the
appellation, but when discussing another relatively-new, pushy, and
reportedly difficult-to-leave religion on the scene, Mormonism, suddenly
the PC hairs on our neck stand on end, and we quickly distance ourselves from anyone who might suggest that the Church of Latter Day Saints is also a cult, or at the very least, not Christian?
When is a church a church, and when is a cult a cult? And why do
some of the same people who get so incensed when Mormons are disparaged
have no problem when the target of our scorn and derision is
Scientology?
Some on the left will say that every religion is a cult, and be done
with it. But whether or not that argument is valid, most Americans
would reject it, I think. While most Americans don’t consider
Catholicism a cult (though the phrase “criminal conspiracy” does
increasingly come to mind with regard to the Catholic’s ongoing, and not
yet fully resolved, pedophilia scandal and cover-up), Southern Baptists
consider Catholics akin to Satan worshippers. So it’s not even
completely cut and dry as to what end of the cult-religion spectrum even
“traditional” religions fall.

And even amongst traditional religions, each faith considers the
other somewhat of a phony. Catholics consider their faith the one truth
faith, as do Orthodox Christians (even if we don’t think Catholics are
going to hell, we still think they’re involved in a slightly-off
venture). And no Christian religion thinks the Jews have it right. And
let’s not even get started on Islam. So, clearly, we don’t have a
problem judging the relative merits of religions, but only up to a
point. Folks on the left get upset when Republicans disparage Muslims.
But those some lefties probably have made a crack about Scientologists.
And while religious right Republicans are incessantly incensed about
some new outrage against their faith, their strident views on freedom of
religion fly out the window when the topic is Scientology, Islam, or
for many, Mormonism.When asked whether Mormons were Christians in 2011, three-fourths of American protestant pastors said “no.” And the French government, like other European states, considers the Mormons a cult. Though others, like Billy Graham, have suddenly changed their minds, and what was once the Mormon cult is now the Mormon church.
The religious right even has a history of trashing mainstream
American religions that embrace gay rights, like reform Judaism, or the
Quakers. Religious right groups routinely dismiss the pro-gay views of
those religions as irrelevant because, they claim, those religions
aren’t “major” American religions (they claim, falsely), so their
pro-gay vote doesn’t count.
So clearly we don’t have a hard and fast rule against knocking
religion in this country. So where do you draw the line, how do you
draw the line, and how did Mormons fall on the barely-acceptable side of
the line, while Scientologists are “clearly” a cult? Do you really
think we’d have had any kind of ethical debate over the propriety of
knocking a Republican presidential candidate who was a Scientologist? I
doubt it.
Now, far be it for me to be making any attempt to exonerate
Scientology. Hardly. I find the entire thing rather creepy. I’m more
interested in how Mormons have become increasingly exonerated for their
once-”heresy,” and why the contradiction between the treatment of their
“religion” and the treatment of Scientology’s?
If anti-Mormonism is truly the “prejudice of our age” (I always get a kick out of it when virulent bigots suddenly discover the evils of prejudice), then why isn’t it just as discriminatory to be anti-Scientology?

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